Capitolium Cuiculi
About
A square temple with six internal chambers and a sacrificial altar stood close by the Old Forum, dedicated to the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva that every Roman colony was expected to honor. A torso from a cult statue of Jupiter, recovered on the spot, confirms the identification of the god the building served. Raising a Capitolium was one of the first acts of civic religion for a new veteran colony, marking Cuicul's formal membership in the Roman world within a generation of its founding under Nerva. It remains one of the few religious buildings at the site whose core construction plausibly predates the great Antonine and Severan expansions that transformed the rest of the city.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
Sources
Nearby
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